WordPress Maintenance Checklist:

Introduction

Having a website that’s not only secure but also up-to-date, is very important. Having an out-of-date site can be a big risk to your business—it could mean lost customers and even security breaches. In this article, we’ll look at the steps you need to take to keep your WordPress site safe and secure.

How to update your WordPress site

If you host your WordPress site with a web host that supports automatic updates, then you don’t have to worry about updating WordPress core, themes, and plugins. However, if you’re using GoDaddy or BlueHost as your web hosting provider, this is something you will need to take care of yourself.

If you want to update the core files of your WordPress website but not the other two (themes and plugins), go ahead and click on “Update Now” at the top right corner of the page after logging in with your username/email address and password.

If there are any new versions available for one or more of those three items (core files), then it will show which ones are available for update on this screen before proceeding. You can choose either all or none of them when updating them together like this by clicking “Update Options”.

Check for updates regularly

You should check for updates regularly. The Premium WordPress themes, and plugins are updated very frequently to fix bugs and make sure they are up to date with the latest security patches.

The importance of keeping your site updated is that it helps keep your website secure from hackers and spammers. In addition, updates often include new features or functionality that may be relevant to you and your site’s visitors.

Updating your themes and plugins safely

• Update your themes and plugins regularly. WordPress itself is updated very frequently, so it’s important to keep your themes and plugins updated as well. The best way to do this is through the automatic update feature built into the WordPress core. When you click the “Update Available” button in the dashboard that shows up on all your installed plugins, it will automatically update them for you (and notify you when there’s an update).
• Backup before updating anything on your site, since there are always risks involved with updating anything! If something goes wrong during an update (and sometimes it does), then having a backup can save you from losing any data or having to start over from scratch. There are many ways to back up a WordPress website: for example, I use the WP-DBManager plugin which helps me automate daily backups of my entire database without any effort on my part whatsoever—you just set it once and forget about it!

Back up your site

Backing up your site is one of the most important things you can do to protect it. You should back up at least once a month, but preferably every week.

Why taking website back up important?

• It’s much easier to recover from a backup than it is to rebuild your entire site from scratch.
• If you get hacked or have some sort of technical problem, not having a recent backup could mean losing months’ worth of work—and even more, if you don’t have backups stored off-site (like on an external hard drive or in the cloud)

How do I back up my site?

There are two ways: manually and automatically. Manually means transferring files by FTP (File Transfer Protocol), which is annoying and time-consuming; automating this process is best practice because it lets you take care of regular maintenance while also keeping your website safe and sound.

In case anything happens unexpectedly down the road that requires immediate attention—for example, if there’s an attack on WordPress itself due to some kind of security vulnerability that gets exploited widely online; when this happens everyone who hasn’t updated their copy will be vulnerable until they do so. So make sure yours does too!

Add an SSL certificate

Site security is an absolutely critical part of keeping your site up and running. If you have sensitive data stored on your server (such as credit card numbers or addresses), or if you want to make sure that your users are visiting a secure website, it is imperative that you add an SSL certificate to your site.

An SSL certificate encrypts all of the data transmitted from one computer to another (for example, when a user sends their information over the internet) so that it can’t be read by third parties who may want to steal or alter the information being sent.

This means not only do hackers not have access to any personal information being sent between users’ computers and yours, but neither do advertisers or other companies looking at ads displayed on your website—which means more money for you! An SSL also protects against malware attacks by making sure nothing malicious can be installed on visitors’ computers while they’re browsing through your pages; this keeps them safe from viruses and other harmful software such as ransomware which threatens their files by encrypting them until they pay up!

Finally – since Google considers sites with secure certificates as trusted sites – there’s another way in which adding one will boost search results: instead of appearing at the bottom when someone searches for keywords related specifically to whatever topic interests them most these days (culture trends, etc) where users tend to see only advertisements before clicking away bored without finding what was really wanted…

Update your password regularly

• Create a strong password that’s at least 8 characters long and contains upper- and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. You can use the password generator in this article to help you out.
• Don’t use words from the dictionary or a combination of your name and birthdate for your password; hackers will try these first! Use something random instead—it’s better for everyone involved if you do.
• If possible, don’t reuse passwords across multiple websites: it makes it easier for hackers to get into all of them when one gets compromised. This is also important if any one of those sites has particularly sensitive information on it (like payment details).

Scan your site for malware

This is a crucial step in any WordPress website maintenance checklist. For example, if you don’t use a security plugin like Wordfence and you don’t scan your site regularly, it could mean that hackers can easily get into your WordPress admin area and steal data or even delete all of your content. To make sure that this doesn’t happen.

We highly recommend using the Sucuri SiteCheck tool. This plugin allows you to test every aspect of your site and see if there are any areas where hackers might be able to infiltrate – such as vulnerabilities in plugins or themes (more on those later).

Use a caching plugin

If your site uses a PHP-based framework, like WordPress, it makes sense to use a caching plugin. Caching plugins reduce the load on your server and hosting provider by storing frequently-used files in memory or on disk.

They also improve performance by minimizing the number of requests made to the server; when you visit another page on your site, this cache can be accessed instead of regenerating things like images and JavaScript files every time.

Plus, since most web browsers don’t support HTTP/2 yet (a protocol that allows two-way communication between client and server), there is still room for improvement in terms of loading time—and caching plugins can help with that too!

If you follow this checklist, you will have a safe, secure, and always-performing website.

There are some things you can do to help your WordPress website stay healthy and running smoothly. You don’t need to be a web developer, but if you follow this checklist, your site will run more efficiently and be safer from hacking attempts.

• Update the software: Even if you are using free WordPress themes and plugins you should be sure you have latest versions updated that fix bugs or security issues. It’s best to keep them up-to-date so they work better with each other while also fixing any issues that may have cropped up in previous versions (and yes, there could be security flaws in old versions). This can be done manually by checking for updates on each plugin or theme individually or automatically through an application like Automatic Updates for WordPress Themes or Plugins for WP Updates Manager.

• Fix broken links: When updating themes and plugins it’s possible some of the code could break existing links on your site, causing 404 errors when clicking on them. You should check all of these pages periodically (I’ll show how later) just in case one break.

• Backups: You should always back up your website regularly — even if nothing has happened yet! A backup ensures that if something goes wrong with your live site, such as an accident caused by someone hacking into it (or worse), you’ll still have access to all of its data without having lost anything important.

• Scanning & Malware Checkup: Also as part of routine maintenance it’s best practice right now due these days not just what we know but also because so many people are doing this kind of stuff online nowadays; thus they should check around their site regularly using tools like Wordfence Security which automatically scans sites against known malware threats so make sure there aren’t any present before launching publicly again – otherwise someone might try infecting users’ computers through theirs instead!

Conclusion

We hope this checklist has given you a better understanding of how to maintain your WordPress site. If you follow all of these steps, we’re confident that your website will be safe, secure, and always performing well!